Week 1 with Your Puppy: Arriving, First Nights, First Routines

By letting the puppy sleep near you — basket or crate right next to your bed. In its first night without mother and siblings, your closeness is the only thing that provides safety; a hand reaching down at the first whimper often works wonders.

The old advice to let the puppy sleep alone from day one and sit out the crying causes more harm than it prevents. A nine-week-old dog screaming at night isn't manipulating — it's afraid. Respond reliably now and you get a dog that later stays alone more calmly, not the other way round. You can still move the sleeping place in a few weeks, gradually and without drama.

Practically, week one means setting an alarm. At nine weeks no puppy bladder lasts eight hours — carry him out once or twice a night, calmly and near-silently, praise quietly at the toilet spot, back into the basket, lights out. No play, no drama: night-time is service, not programme.

The scent blanket from the litter belongs in the basket, one ear stays with the puppy, and patience does the rest. Most puppies sleep noticeably more calmly within a few nights; some need two or three weeks. Both are normal.

18 to 20 hours a day, spread over many naps — far more than most first-time owners expect. Sleep isn't lost time for a puppy; it's when its brain processes everything new.

The tricky part: an overtired puppy doesn't look tired, it looks wired — biting harder, listening worse, ramping up. Answering that with more activity feeds the spiral. The right answer is almost always a rest break at the sleeping place.

Rule of thumb for the first weeks: roughly one hour awake, then a longer rest. You may actively guide rest — settle him, stay close, be boring. A puppy learning to rest is learning the most important skill of its everyday life.

A boring one — the same every day. Fixed meal times (usually three to four meals at nine weeks); after every meal, every nap and every play session the same path to the same toilet spot; the same few words for the same things. Predictability is to a puppy what security is to us.

Deliberately keep the world small: one room first, then the home, then the surroundings. A puppy that has seen the DIY store, the train station and the beer garden by day three hasn't learned more — it has only endured more. New experiences come in small doses with plenty of processing sleep in between.

And let the welcome visits wait a week. Everyone wanting to meet the puppy is understandable — but it needs to get to know you first. Calm individual visits from week two are early enough, and nothing is lost for socialisation.

If you like, let the settling-in guide on this site build a plan for your first days — it turns exactly these principles into a concrete daily schedule.

The feeling nobody budgets for: exhaustion, overwhelm, sometimes genuine regret in the first days and weeks — often paired with guilt, because you'd been looking forward to this for so long. There's a name for it now, the puppy blues, and it describes something very common.

The mechanics are banal and merciless: sleep deprivation, a living creature under constant supervision, all your usual freedoms gone overnight — that is objectively hard, and exhaustion darkens every judgement. None of it says anything about whether you're a good owner or the dog is right for you.

What helps: catch up on sleep wherever possible and hand over for a few hours at a time — the puppy is allowed to run routines with your partner or another trusted person. Say it out loud, ideally to your breeder too; good breeders know the phenomenon and reassure from experience. For nearly everyone the blues fades as routines take hold and nights grow calmer — usually within a few weeks.

Three things, all unspectacular, all this week: register your puppy's microchip to you in a pet registry — free at TASSO or Findefix and done in ten minutes. A chip helps nothing in a lost-dog case if it isn't registered to anyone; with a breeder puppy you also need the existing registration transferred to you.

Then dog tax: it's regulated municipally, registered with your local tax or public-order office, usually within a few weeks of moving in — deadline and rate are on your municipality's website. Finally, dog liability insurance: in Berlin, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia it is mandatory for all dogs; most other states require it only for specific dogs.

Mandatory or not: as the keeper you are liable under § 833 of the German Civil Code for damage your dog causes — even without any fault of your own, and private liability policies do not cover dogs. A puppy that slips the lead and makes a car swerve can mean financial ruin without cover. Take it out before you're out and about.